British officials have taken encouragement from the Kremlin’s apparent willingness not to let these rows contaminate relations with investors, including BP, which has invested $8 billion cash and assets in its joint venture. A spokesman for BP said that despite the British Council row it was “business as usual”, and that the company felt no impact on its own affairs. “We’ve been in Russia since the 1990s and have been through all sorts of changes, and it feels the same,” Tony Odone said.

These mammoth energy projects have their own political difficulties, and even if Russia has chosen to keep them separate from its disputes with national governments, it has hardly left them alone.

Excerpted from article by Bronwen Maddox in The Times, London, January 16